Abstract We study the situation of an exogenous decisionmaker aiming to encourage a population of autonomous, self-regarding agents to follow a desired behaviour at a minimal cost. The primary goal is therefore to reach an efficient trade-off between pushing the agents to achieve the desired configuration while minimising the total investment. To this end, we test several interference paradigms resorting to simulations of agents facing a cooperative dilemma in a spatial arrangement. We systematically analyse and compare interference strategies rewarding local or global behavioural patterns. Our results show that taking into account the neighbourhood’s local properties, such as its level of cooperativeness, can lead to a significant improvement regarding cost efficiency while guaranteeing high levels of cooperation. As such, we argue that local interference strategies are more efficient than global ones in fostering cooperation in a population of autonomous agents.